November 21, 2025
NAYPYIDAW – The Central Bank of Myanmar has issued a statement saying that unauthorized trading, transfer, storage, or hoarding of crypto assets should be avoided and that only legal money transfers through banks should be used.
The Central Bank of Myanmar (CBM) has stated that the Crypto Currency market is a market where investors can lose money due to its extremely volatile price movements. It also has a low level of regulatory oversight, online security breaches, and hacking, which can lead to the loss of personal funds. Therefore, the public should refrain from trading, transferring, storing, or hoarding Crypto Assets not authorized by the CBM, and should only use legal currency transfers through banks.
The Central Bank of Myanmar announced in the newspapers on May 3, 2019 that it does not allow the online or in-person trading of digital currencies (including cryptocurrencies), and that it does not consider digital currencies (including cryptocurrencies) to be legal tender, and that financial institutions are not permitted to trade them, as announced in a notification on May 15, 2020.
In addition, like Myanmar, countries such as China, India, Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Nepal, Pakistan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Angola, and Colombia have not officially recognized digital currencies (including cryptocurrencies). Most of these countries do not recognize them as legal tender, but allow them as digital assets, and some allow them for trade and investment. Although cryptocurrencies are not legal in China, they are testing a central bank digital currency (E-CNY), and the Central Bank of Myanmar is also conducting research-level work on CBDC, the Central Bank of Myanmar announced.
Although some governments have prohibited the public from using crypto currencies legally, the Central Bank has stated that as time goes by, the public has been collecting and trading them, and as more and more people are investing in crypto assets in the hope of making more profits based on price fluctuations, illegal activities such as drug trafficking, arms smuggling, human trafficking, money laundering, and AML/CFT have also been storing their assets as crypto assets because they do not need to use bank accounts and can evade taxes.
In the past, illegal operators stored digital currencies (including cryptocurrencies) to freely move their assets and evade taxes, but the recent perception that governments can track and control cryptocurrency assets has led to criminals being more cautious about handling and using cryptocurrencies in the future, and the use of cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin) may decrease, according to the Central Bank of Myanmar.